looking at the woman in the mirror
by jada jasmine
Summary: She figured Tim Riggins was the closest she was gonna get to having someone belong to her. Tim/Tyra.


looking at the (wo)man in the mirror

tim/tyra

summary: She figured Tim Riggins was the closest she was gonna get to having someone belong t

::

Tyra is seven, freckles on her face and scrapes on her knees, nose pressed tight against the window as Daddy's blue (_Blue like your eyes, baby girl,_ he'd said before the money dried up) Buick screeches out of the driveway for the last time.

Her hands press tight against the window, tight enough to stretch right through it and grab onto to that beautiful blue car, tight enough to let it take her with it, and even after she takes her hand off the window, it's still there, outlined on the glass from her heavy breathing.

Mama rubs it off frantically with the worn sleeve of her pink shirt, maybe wipes that same sleeve on the corner of her eye; Mindy rolls her eyes and pops her gum, always older than she really is.

Tyra just stands there, doesn't cry like Mama or slam doors like Mindy, just digs her fingernails into the palms of her hands until it leaves dents into her tanned skin and maybe draws blood.

She lets out a whoosh of breath when she unclenches and rubs her hands on her pants. The pain is still there, a dull throbbing ache instead of the sharp heart-breaking stabbing of before, but Tyra thinks she can live with it.

Or more honestly, she learns how to.

::

Tim Riggins at the age of 10 is not quite more devil than angel yet, and this is the part of him she never wants to forget.

Hair not too long, just a tad past his ears and more likely than not, vanilla ice cream smeared on his face and Jason Street at his side.

He pulls her pigtails, pushes her down 'cuz she's too tall for a girl, laughs a little when the gravel digs into her palms (they leave indentations, smaller than before, little circles instead of half-moons but it hurts all the same).

Jason, always the Golden Boy, will pick her up before Tim says he's sorry, glares at Tim and mutters, "You don't push _girls,_ Timmy," while Tyra brushes off her knees and rubs the Texas dirt out of the only clean pair of jeans she has left.

Later, Tim will come up to her, dirt under his fingernails and little boy lost eyes, murmur _I'm sorry_ to the tip of his cowboy boots and scuff up the dust around him.

She'll tease him, look him straight in the eyes with her hands on her hips, reply with "I can't hear you," and she'll catch a flash of a Tim Riggins smile that'll makes her heart flutter a little. But it'll go as fast as it came and sometimes she thinks she imagined it.

(like the taste of Good Humor bars after Daddy bought her one, or Mama's smile on Sunday mornings when they used to go to church)

"Woman, I apologized. Now let's make up in the nude."

Tyra slaps him and Timmy smirks.

"Learned that from Billy."

"Billy's stupid, Tim. You know that."

Tim shrugs, and Tyra wonders if it's because there's no one else he could be acting like. Two daddies gone and two survivors left behind.

She might hold his hand for a second, take a deep breath and then let it go.

He watches her leave, and she pretends not to notice.

::

Thirteen years old and Tyra's got boobs, legs up to there, blond hair, and an attitude that'll tear you to shreds.

Thirteen years old and Tim's filled out, arms strong, abs defined, hair almost as long as Tyra's, and a gaggle of girls following his every step.

"Hey Tyra," he drawls from beneath his curtain of hair, "why don't you come sit your pretty behind down."

"Fuck off Tim, I don't wanna deal with it."

Jason laughs, makes fun of Tim for the rejection and Lyla Garrity perches next to him with a pale yellow sundress on, lips pursed in displeasure.

"One day you're gonna love me, Collette," and it would sound wrong coming from any other 13 year old boy, but all the girls around him swoon.

Tyra rolls her eyes.

::

Jason Street, QB1, NFL prospect, meal ticket to half of Dillon, greatest high school football player Dillon High has ever seen, goes down hard and never gets up again.

A part of Tim Riggins goes with him.

Texas forever goes with it too, but they won't find that out till much later.

Still, Tyra's there after. When Tim can't bring himself to get to the goddamned hospital room, when Lyla Garrity can't stop chastising him for it, when he once cried into his beer and no one else saw.

She lets him use her to forget, drown in the thrusts and groans of sex in the backseat of his truck, doesn't complain if sometimes he isn't so gentle.

Once, when she's buttoning her jeans and he's buttoning two of his stupid snaps on those cowboy shirts, she grabs his face between her hands and stares straight into his eyes.

"Go see Jason," she says and he holds her gaze for three mississippi's before tearing his gaze away.

She climbs out of the truck, and he still doesn't go.

::

Tim Riggins hits a beer can so hard with his golf club that it splinters in half.

Tyra drives away, hair flying in her face but damn it she's keeping all the windows down.

She doesn't cry, doesn't slam doors when she gets back home. Just takes deep, steady breaths until the pain fades to a throbbing ache and she's mastered living like this.

She holds her head high, blue eyes up to the peeling white paint, knows he'll be back.

::

Sometimes, when Tim steps out of his truck and his jeans ride low and his smile peeks out from his hair, Tyra understands her mama.

Understands the need for a man to look at her, the need for hands to slide appreciatively over her figure and whisper sweet nothings. She knows the feeling of Tim Riggins' hands all over her, and there are moments like these (far and few between but they're there, ingrained into her DNA like a mutation) that makes her scared to ever be without them.

But there are some things she can not forgive, and Lyla Garrity is one of them.

::

Fast-forward to the refrigerator section of the supermarket.

_Guess not_, she thinks as she digs her cowboy boots into his thighs. She trembles with fear more than pleasure.

::

Landry is sweet, sweeter than she knows she deserves, all awkward glances and heroic actions and cute stutter.

She makes lists sometimes, of the good things about Landry and Tim. Silly little things that she rips into shreds right after, hating how they make her seem like a smitten little kid.

Landry always has more on his side than Tim, because being an alcoholic isn't exactly a redeeming quality.

Still, she thinks in the seconds after she's finished writing it, but before she tears it into quarters, then eighths, then smaller again. _Still,_ she thinks.

::

She knocks on the door, tells herself if it's not answered by the time she counts to four she's out of this hick town and –

Tim answers on two, beer in his hand and cutoff Panther tee smelling like last night's mistakes.

"Hey Tyra," he says, slow and languid and she feels it down to her bones.

"I'm leaving. Going to New York. Right now." The sound of it still makes her heart race faster than Tim ever did, makes her brain dizzy with the possibilities and her imagination full to the brim.

Tim's eyes are hooded as always, desire and lust and greed replaced for a second by betrayal and he collects his thoughts.

"Well aren't I lucky to be getting a goodbye. Good luck with that." He finishes a bottle and throws it hard. She thinks it lands in the neighbors yard. Wonders if it's the one he used to sleep with in between her and Lyla.

"Don't be such a dumbass, Tim. Would you shut up and listen to me for once?"

He leans against the doorframe, and she puts her hands on her hips and looks at him square in the eye again. Like they're ten, but this time she won't let him push her down anywhere.

"You wanna come with?"

The question sits between them on the doorstep for a minute, Tyra shifting her weight and Tim staring at her like the jackass he is. She turns around and walks back to the car before she feels his calloused hand on her shoulder, turns around and ignores the lilting beat of her heart.

"Um, let me get some things."

She stays in the car while he gets whatever he deems important enough to bring, key in the ignition and foot lingering above the pedal just to prove she could drive away if she wanted.

Tim strolls out with a duffel bag over his shoulder and a six-pack in the other hand. He throws the bag into the back and places the beer in between them, lets his arm settle onto her shoulder.

She breathes it in for a second, lets herself feel the weight of it on her bones, before shrugging it off and glaring at him.

The thought of leaving Dillon has plagued her like a headache since she watched her daddy do the same, but it felt wrong to leave Tim to live up to the Riggins name all by himself. She figured Tim Riggins was the closest she was gonna get to having someone belong to her.

There's not magic in the air when she turns the key, because she stopped believing in fairy tales years ago, when she had a family that was whole and no bruises that would always be etched into her mind and the worst sound she'd ever heard was Lyla Garrity's grating voice, not the sick crunching crack of skull.

Still, Tim's next to her with a smile wrapped around a brown glass bottle and she's getting out with the only part of Dillon she didn't want to leave behind.

"What'd you pack in that tiny bag? Three cowboy shirts, a Panthers cutoff, and a pair of jeans I'm guessing."

"Figured I'd make it easier for you to take my clothes off."

He laughs to the sound of some sorry country music song on the radio, and Tyra drives herself into the sunset.

::

AN: Friday Night Lights is the most real, heartbreaking, joyful, exhilarating, (insert as many positive adjectives as possible here) show I've ever seen on TV. I bought the first two seasons at Best Buy and didn't leave the house for three days. Watch it now. Also, Tim Riggins is the most beautiful boy I think I've ever seen, and is 10x better than Chuck Bass as a bad boy character. If anyone's read really great FNL fanfic I'd be forever grateful if you rec'd it to me! ps- I'm on lj now, jada_jasmine. Friend me!

_Tim Riggins_: You look good, real good...

_Lyla Garrity_: Thanks, that's probably because yesterday I was baptized and accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. What did you do recently, Tim?

_Tim Riggins_: Uh, I had a threeway with the Stratton sisters... 


End file.
